Gulliver's Travels. PART III. A VOYAGE TO LAPUTA, BALNIBARBI, LUGGNAGG, GLUBBDUBDRIB, AND JAPAN.

CHAPTER IV.

[The author leaves Laputa; is conveyed to Balnibarbi; arrives at the
metropolis. A description of the metropolis, and the country adjoining.
The author hospitably received by a great lord. His conversation
with that lord.]

Although I cannot say that I was ill treated in this island, yet I must
confess I thought myself too much neglected, not without some degree
of contempt; for neither prince nor people appeared to be curious in
any part of knowledge, except mathematics and music, wherein I was far
their inferior, and upon that account very little regarded.

On the other side, after having seen all the curiosities of the island,
I was very desirous to leave it, being heartily weary of those people.
They were indeed excellent in two sciences for which I have great esteem,
and wherein I am not unversed; but, at the same time, so abstracted
and involved in speculation, that I never met with such disagreeable
companions. I conversed only with women, tradesmen, flappers,
and court-pages, during two months of my abode there; by which, at last,
I rendered myself extremely contemptible; yet these were the only people
from whom I could ever receive a reasonable answer.

I had obtained, by hard study, a good degree of knowledge in their language:
I was weary of being confined to an island where I received so little
countenance, and resolved to leave it with the first opportunity.

There was a great lord at court, nearly related to the king, and for
that reason alone used with respect. He was universally reckoned
the most ignorant and stupid person among them. He had performed
many eminent services for the crown, had great natural and acquired
parts, adorned with integrity and honour; but so ill an ear for music,
that his detractors reported, “he had been often known to beat
time in the wrong place;” neither could his tutors, without extreme
difficulty, teach him to demonstrate the most easy proposition in the
mathematics. He was pleased to show me many marks of favour, often
did me the honour of a visit, desired to be informed in the affairs
of Europe, the laws and customs, the manners and learning of the several
countries where I had travelled. He listened to me with great
attention, and made very wise observations on all I spoke. He
had two flappers attending him for state, but never made use of them,
except at court and in visits of ceremony, and would always command
them to withdraw, when we were alone together.

I entreated this illustrious person, to intercede in my behalf with
his majesty, for leave to depart; which he accordingly did, as he was
pleased to tell me, with regret: for indeed he had made me several offers
very advantageous, which, however, I refused, with expressions of the
highest acknowledgment.

On the 16th of February I took leave of his majesty and the court.
The king made me a present to the value of about two hundred pounds
English, and my protector, his kinsman, as much more, together with
a letter of recommendation to a friend of his in Lagado, the metropolis.
The island being then hovering over a mountain about two miles from
it, I was let down from the lowest gallery, in the same manner as I
had been taken up.

grandee A person of eminence or high rank. (AHD)

The continent, as far as it is subject to the monarch of the flying island, passes under the general name of Balnibarbi; and the metropolis, as I said before, is called Lagado. I felt some little satisfaction in finding myself on firm ground. I walked to the city without any concern, being clad like one of the natives, and sufficiently instructed to converse with them. I soon found out the person's house to whom I was recommended, presented my letter from his friend the grandee in the island, and was received with much kindness. This great lord, whose name was Munodi, ordered me an apartment in his own house, where I continued during my stay, and was entertained in a most hospitable manner.

The next morning after my arrival, he took me in his chariot to see the town, which is about half the bigness of London; but the houses very strangely built, and most of them out of repair. The people in the streets walked fast, looked wild, their eyes fixed, and were generally in rags. We passed through one of the town gates, and went about three miles into the country, where I saw many labourers working with several sorts of tools in the ground, but was not able to conjecture what they were about: neither did observe any expectation either of corn or grass, although the soil appeared to be excellent. I could not forbear admiring at these odd appearances, both in town and country; and I made bold to desire my conductor, that he would be pleased to explain to me, what could be meant by so many busy heads, hands, and faces, both in the streets and the fields, because I did not discover any good effects they produced; but, on the contrary, I never knew a soil so unhappily cultivated, houses so ill contrived and so ruinous, or a people whose countenances and habit expressed so much misery and want.

This lord Munodi was a person of the first rank, and had been some years governor of Lagado; but, by a cabal of ministers, was discharged for insufficiency. However, the king treated him with tenderness, as a well-meaning man, but of a low contemptible understanding.

When I gave that free censure of the country and its inhabitants, he
made no further answer than by telling me, “that I had not been
long enough among them to form a judgment; and that the different nations
of the world had different customs;” with other common topics
to the same purpose. But, when we returned to his palace, he asked
me “how I liked the building, what absurdities I observed, and
what quarrel I had with the dress or looks of his domestics?”
This he might safely do; because every thing about him was magnificent,
regular, and polite. I answered, “that his excellency's
prudence, quality, and fortune, had exempted him from those defects,
which folly and beggary had produced in others.” He said,
“if I would go with him to his country-house, about twenty miles
distant, where his estate lay, there would be more leisure for this
kind of conversation.” I told his excellency “that
I was entirely at his disposal;” and accordingly we set out next
morning.

During our journey he made me observe the several methods used by farmers
in managing their lands, which to me were wholly unaccountable; for,
except in some very few places, I could not discover one ear of corn
or blade of grass. But, in three hours travelling, the scene was
wholly altered; we came into a most beautiful country; farmers'
houses, at small distances, neatly built; the fields enclosed, containing
vineyards, corn-grounds, and meadows. Neither do I remember to
have seen a more delightful prospect. His excellency observed
my countenance to clear up; he told me, with a sigh, “that there
his estate began, and would continue the same, till we should come to
his house: that his countrymen ridiculed and despised him, for managing
his affairs no better, and for setting so ill an example to the kingdom;
which, however, was followed by very few, such as were old, and wilful,
and weak like himself.”

We came at length to the house, which was indeed a noble structure,
built according to the best rules of ancient architecture. The
fountains, gardens, walks, avenues, and groves, were all disposed with
exact judgment and taste. I gave due praises to every thing I
saw, whereof his excellency took not the least notice till after supper;
when, there being no third companion, he told me with a very melancholy
air “that he doubted he must throw down his houses in town and
country, to rebuild them after the present mode; destroy all his plantations,
and cast others into such a form as modern usage required, and give
the same directions to all his tenants, unless he would submit to incur
the censure of pride, singularity, affectation, ignorance, caprice,
and perhaps increase his majesty's displeasure; that the admiration
I appeared to be under would cease or diminish, when he had informed
me of some particulars which, probably, I never heard of at court, the
people there being too much taken up in their own speculations, to have
regard to what passed here below.”

projector one who device plans and projects.

humor state of mind.

The sum of his discourse was to this effect: “That about forty
years ago, certain persons went up to Laputa, either upon business or
diversion, and, after five months continuance, came back with a very
little smattering in mathematics, but full of volatile spirits acquired
in that airy region: that these persons, upon their return, began to
dislike the management of every thing below, and fell into schemes of
putting all arts, sciences, languages, and mechanics, upon a new foot.
To this end, they procured a royal patent for erecting an academy of
projectors in Lagado; and the humour prevailed so strongly among the
people, that there is not a town of any consequence in the kingdom without
such an academy. In these colleges the professors contrive new
rules and methods of agriculture and building, and new instruments,
and tools for all trades and manufactures; whereby, as they undertake,
one man shall do the work of ten; a palace may be built in a week, of
materials so durable as to last for ever without repairing. All
the fruits of the earth shall come to maturity at whatever season we
think fit to choose, and increase a hundred fold more than they do at
present; with innumerable other happy proposals. The only inconvenience
is, that none of these projects are yet brought to perfection; and in
the mean time, the whole country lies miserably waste, the houses in
ruins, and the people without food or clothes. By all which, instead
of being discouraged, they are fifty times more violently bent upon
prosecuting their schemes, driven equally on by hope and despair: that
as for himself, being not of an enterprising spirit, he was content
to go on in the old forms, to live in the houses his ancestors had built,
and act as they did, in every part of life, without innovation: that
some few other persons of quality and gentry had done the same, but
were looked on with an eye of contempt and ill-will, as enemies to art,
ignorant, and ill common-wealth's men, preferring their own ease
and sloth before the general improvement of their country.”

His lordship added, “That he would not, by any further particulars,
prevent the pleasure I should certainly take in viewing the grand academy,
whither he was resolved I should go.” He only desired me
to observe a ruined building, upon the side of a mountain about three
miles distant, of which he gave me this account: “That he had
a very convenient mill within half a mile of his house, turned by a
current from a large river, and sufficient for his own family, as well
as a great number of his tenants; that about seven years ago, a club
of those projectors came to him with proposals to destroy this mill,
and build another on the side of that mountain, on the long ridge whereof
a long canal must be cut, for a repository of water, to be conveyed
up by pipes and engines to supply the mill, because the wind and air
upon a height agitated the water, and thereby made it fitter for motion,
and because the water, descending down a declivity, would turn the mill
with half the current of a river whose course is more upon a level.”
He said, “that being then not very well with the court, and pressed
by many of his friends, he complied with the proposal; and after employing
a hundred men for two years, the work miscarried, the projectors went
off, laying the blame entirely upon him, railing at him ever since,
and putting others upon the same experiment, with equal assurance of
success, as well as equal disappointment.”

In a few days we came back to town; and his excellency, considering the bad character he had in the academy, would not go with me himself, but recommended me to a friend of his, to bear me company thither. My lord was pleased to represent me as a great admirer of projects, and a person of much curiosity and easy belief; which, indeed, was not without truth; for I had myself been a sort of projector in my younger days.